Abstract

With the advent of technology that made possible large-scale sequencing and genotyping studies, it quickly became apparent that the demographic history of our species had been recorded in the genome and we could reconstruct our wanderings across the globe by studying DNA. While the vast majority of genetic variation is shared among continental populations, the most prominent finding from these early surveys of regional populations was the substantially greater degree of heterozygosity found in contemporary African populations. The 'out of Africa' story has long been a central dogma in paleoanthropology, and the rich cultural and linguistic heritage of the continent has also been well documented; yet the implications of this phase of human history for biomedicine had never been fully appreciated.